Ignoring Israeli victims

The United Nations is morally corrupt

'The United Nations is morally corrupt and can never achieve the great moral purposes for which it was created'

Activists protest against United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) outside their offices in Jerusalem, March 20, 2024. (The Times of Israel: Yonatan Sindel/ Flash90)
Activists protest against United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) outside their offices in Jerusalem, March 20, 2024. (The Times of Israel: Yonatan Sindel/ Flash90)

In the entrance hall to the United Nations in New York, there’s a passageway all visitors pass through. Along the walls there’s an exhibition reminding visitors of the victims of terrorist attacks from around the world, including attacks in New York, Boston and Kenya.

There’s even a dedicated day at the UN to remember victims of terrorism, but what’s missing from that day and the many exhibits of terror attacks is one group – Israeli victims of Palestinian terror attacks.

That’s because the UN is unable to see Israelis as victims of terrorism and Palestinians as perpetrators. For them, the October 7 attacks never seemed to have occurred – only Israel’s response to them.

This should come as no surprise. For decades the UN has been obsessed with the Jewish state, passing more resolutions each year against Israel than serial human rights abusers such as Iran, Syria, North Korea, China and Russia combined.

Its various committees are dominated by these same abusers often leading to farcical situations such as when Iran, where women are so brutally oppressed, was appointed to the UN Women Rights Commission in 2021 – a decision that was thankfully overturned when a successful campaign led by UN Watch led to its expulsion in December 2022.

As absurd as these appointments are, it actually makes sense when we remember that the UN is not made up of democracies that value human rights and freedoms the way Western societies do. Just 84 of its 193 member states are rated as free democracies, meaning it is dominated by non-free societies and brutal dictatorships.

For them the UN is a global platform in which, rather than being ostracised for their oppressive views, they are elevated.

Since October 7, this bias against Israel has become so acute and obvious, that it should be impossible to ignore, yet shockingly, it is being ignored in Canberra and other Western capitals. Despite the brutality of this heinous attack that murdered 1200 innocent people in the most brutal ways possible and kidnapped 250 more, the world body has still never been able to bring itself to condemn the evil attack.

It did, however, hold a moment’s silence for late Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, known as the “Butcher of Tehran” for his brutal role in 1988 in the “Death Commissions”, which ordered the execution of Iranians citizens accused of crimes against the regime.

This kind of absurd, twisted morality is unfortunately not limited to any one body or person at the UN but permeates the entire institution.

UNRWA, the body for Palestinian refugees, has been implicated in scandal after scandal for years, and has now been directly implicated in terror activities on October 7, even firing staff for their involvement. Yet, somehow it still managed to con a naive world into giving it more money, claiming it performs “life-saving operations”.

UN Women is another example. It claims to be “a global champion for women and girls” with a goal that “All women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence.” Honourable goals indeed, but as the UN has proven again and again, they are just words without substance and platitudes without meaning. Despite the overwhelming evidence of sexual violence committed against Israeli women and children, UN Women remained shamefully silent and only on December 1, almost two months later, did they finally issue a weak statement of condemnation.

Israeli women were thus victimised twice. Once by the monstrous actions of the Hamas terrorists whose depraved cruelty sent shockwaves through Israeli society, and secondly through the abhorrent behaviour of groups like UN Women whose so-called charter, when it came to Jewish lives, was nothing more than a lie.

This shameful behaviour was solidified when UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres omitted Hamas in a report on organisations suspected of committing acts of sexual violence during conflict.

And as recently as the last few weeks, the UN Security Council held an emergency session after an Israeli strike on a terror compound in August that killed at least 31 Palestinian terrorists – yet failed to hold a similar session on a Hezbollah rocket attack that murdered 12 innocent Druze children in the Golan Heights a month earlier. The message is clear: For the UN, innocent Israeli children playing in a soccer field are less worthy than Palestinian terrorists killed in Israeli defensive air strikes.

These kinds of hypocritical actions should demonstrate to all free-thinking individuals and countries that the United Nations is morally corrupt and can never achieve the great moral purposes for which it was created by Western societies after World War II. The values of Western countries like Australia are being mocked by this immoral organisation and Australia should hold the UN to account and scrutiny, rather than continue to serve as enablers for its indefensible actions.

Justin Amler is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).

read more:
comments